


Better with Friends

by loveandallthat



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-28 16:02:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8452750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandallthat/pseuds/loveandallthat
Summary: “Bang With Friends was a huge flop,” Dex answers, “Because it sucked.”Everyone’s eyes jerk straight to him, and nobody makes a sound.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I heard about Bang with Friends and thought, oh no. So of course I wrote about it. Maybe a braver writer than I would have made this more dramatic, but I like it well enough as is.
> 
> No beta, please let me know if you find a mistake or twelve!

“What the fuck?” Holster exclaims.  He pulls a pair of earbuds out of his ears.  A bunch of the guys are crowded around the TV screen, even though only Chowder and Tango are playing Mario Kart; nobody else has the energy.

“What’s up?” Ransom asks him, from across the room.

Dex sits up a little bit to listen.

“There’s an app to see which of your friends want to sleep with you.”

“Holy shit,” Ransom says.

Chowder drives his character straight off the course and Tango wins.  “Wait, what?”

“How is that a real thing?” Tango starts.  “Is that even legal?  Why haven’t I heard of it?”

Holster seems to have mostly recovered.  “Hold on.  Dex, why aren’t you freaking out?”

“Bang With Friends was a huge flop,” Dex answers, “Because it sucked.”

Everyone’s eyes jerk straight to him, and nobody makes a sound.

“What?” Dex finally asks.

“Why the fuck do you know that?” Holster asks him.

“I heard about it when it happened!” Dex defended.  “It’s not that weird.”

“Bro, you’re the only one in this entire room who’s heard of it,” Ransom pointed out.

“Holster just heard about it!” Chowder pipes up.  Dex laughs; Chowder really is the best.

“But this is a great idea!” Holster argues.

“No it isn’t,” Dex states flatly.  “Where’s Bitty; he’d agree with me.  Or Shitty, or Lardo.”

“I agree with you!” Chowder says.  Really, the best.

Dex shrugs.  “Luckily it doesn’t matter, since it’s Down now.”

“What, you just tried to use it?” Ransom asked.

“No, the app is now called Down.  As in, ‘to fuck.’  I don’t know if it even connects to your friends anymore.” 

“What’s the point?” Tango asks.  “Isn’t that just Tinder?”

“Tinder is supposed to be for dating,” Dex corrects and, oh god, he should definitely stop acting the expert on dating apps.

Holster has, apparently, looked it up.  “The new Down connects you to friends and friends of friends, and lets you choose dating or hookups.  You only see the other person if they agree.”

Dex is kind of relieved to no longer be the one who sounds like he’s researched this.  “That’s too complicated.”

“It doesn’t seem that complex--” Chowder starts, until Dex looks over at his maybe-no-longer-the-best friend.

“Oh?” Holster asks.

“Except for connecting it to Facebook to access friends’ lists!  That would be annoying.”

Dex sighs, relieved.

Holster puts an arm around Chowder.  “But on a smaller scale . . .”

Shit, Dex knows exactly where this is going.  “Absolutely not.”

Ransom gets on Chowder’s other side and maneuvers the three of them so that they’re facing Dex.  “If we set our own profiles . . .”

“One class isn’t enough to really teach app design,” Chowder insists, still luckily on Dex’s side.

“You took a class on it?” Ransom asks.  Dex uses every bit of his control not to glare at Chowder.

Instead he continues protesting flatly.  “I’m not doing it.”

“It’s not a homophobic thing, is it?” Holster asks, and Dex snaps.  He knows what his teammates think of him, or thought of him before--he hoped they’d changed their minds.

“You want me,” he grits out, “to make an app for a team full of mostly straight guys and three known not-straight guys to swipe for whether or not they’d sleep with each other.  Where the straight guys either lie or swipe no  _ every single time  _ and maybe some guys actually say yes and mean it and get matched with liars who will  _ know _ .  But I’m homophobic?”

Silence, and everyone is looking over Dex’s shoulder.  He turns to look, and finds that Bitty and Nursey have just entered the house.  

“I didn’t know there was someone besides me and Bitty,” Nursey says, making no attempt to find out who.  Maybe he actually doesn’t care, or maybe he’s actually being respectful enough of the third person.  Dex certainly isn’t going to tell anyone.  Instead he pushes past them out the front door.

Bitty runs after him and stops him at the end of the street.  He gets his hand on Dex’s shoulder.  “Look, I may not know what was going on in there, but it sounds like you were defending me?  So thanks.”

Dex can see Bitty’s sincerity written all over his face.  “You don’t have to thank me.  I mean yeah, I was defending you and Nurse, but you probably already figured out the third guy was me.”

Bitty shrugs.  “It could have been any of the tadpoles.  They don’t talk to me much; it’s like I know nothing about them.”

That makes Dex pause.  “Great, now I’m worried that Ransom and Holster are going to start suspecting them.  Shit, what if someone is and they get outed?”

“Breathe, sweetie,” Bitty instructs, which is easier said than done at this point.  “You don’t have to tell anybody anything to protect other people.  If you want I’ll go tell them right now that you counted me twice because I’m  _ so  _ gay.”

Dex laughs.  Bitty looks fondly satisfied, like that was his goal.  “Me, too,” Dex offers, as clarification.  He’s been at Samwell long enough to know that “not straight” and gay are different things, but he also knows where he stands.  Bitty ruffles his hair, which is absolutely ridiculous with their height difference.

He feels a weird, foreign urge to hug Bitty, so he puts his hands in his pockets instead.  “If we keep bonding over this, we’re going to become a stereotype.”

“I’m not worried about that, if you haven’t noticed.  But you really can talk to me.”

“I know,” Dex says, and he does.  He isn’t sure that he wants to, at least right now.  It’s weird that someone knows, and that people might suspect--actually, that’s worse, somehow.  “I almost wish that people would just  _ know  _ without me telling them, and without ever talking to me about it.”

Bitty smiles sympathetically.  “I know what you mean--you didn’t see me my first year here, but that’s definitely how I felt.  I told Shitty first, then Ransom and Holster, and after that everyone just kind of found out.”

That’s surprising to Dex.  “You didn’t tell Jack?”

Turning red, Bitty shakes his head.  “We, um, didn’t get along very well at the beginning of the year.”

Dex can’t imagine a world in which it didn’t seem like Jack and Bitty had something special that nobody else could touch.  Like Jack and Shitty, like Ransom and Holster, like Bitty and Chowder--but different.  He wishes he had that with someone--more than just his new bond with Bitty.  One that he basically could have initiated at any moment, if he hadn’t been so worried.

Suddenly it seems like this conversation is taking place in a ridiculous location.  Dex is uncomfortable going back into the house--it will definitely look like he overreacted and Bitty brought him back.  Besides, Bitty doesn’t look like he wants to be having this conversation anymore.

“I’m going back to my dorm,” he tells Bitty.  

Bitty looks almost relieved, but he’s still trying to be considerate.  “Are you sure you want to be alone?

Dex doesn’t actually know if Bitty is offering to come with him or trying to bring him back to the Haus, but he doesn’t really like either of those options.

“Yeah, Bitty, I’ll be fine.  Thanks.”

He goes back to his room and is mostly fine, the general panic back at a low level.

When he’s finally relaxed enough to start working on his computer science homework, he’s interrupted by a knock on the door.

It’s Nursey.

“Uh, hey,” he mumbles, when Dex answers the door.

“Hi,” Dex replies, suspiciously.

“Can I come in?” Nursey asks him.  Wordlessly, Dex steps aside to let him do so, closing the door after him even though he doesn’t really want to be alone with him.

Nursey doesn’t appear to need any more answers, and instead launches into a surprisingly long tirade.  “I just wanted to say that you said there were three guys on the team, right, and maybe someone else told you something?  Which is fine, because I don’t want to invade anyone’s privacy--or yours, either!  I just wanted to say that it seemed like you maybe meant you?  And if you did, you could tell me.  But you probably knew that already.  It’s probably not you, or if it is, you probably just don’t want me to know.  That’s fine!  It’s fine.  I’ll leave.”

Dex is going to get a headache.  He rubs his eyes, takes a deep breath and lets it out loudly.  “Yeah, it’s me; I’m gay.”

“Oh, really?  That’s chill,” Nursey drawls.  Dex almost has whiplash from his dramatic change in comportment.

“Did you pretend to be awkward about it just to get me to admit it?” Dex accuses.

“No, unfortunately that was genuine.”

“Huh,” Dex says, and looks at Nursey differently.

“Please don’t do that,” Nursey begs tiredly.  He lies down on Dex’s unmade bed without asking; Dex thinks he probably didn’t even hesitate.  His awkwardness is definitely not genuine, Dex thinks petulantly.

“You don’t seem surprised,” Dex accuses.

Nursey shrugs, which doesn’t work as well when he’s lying down.  “I told you, I thought you might have meant you.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when you told me,” Dex offers, which is true.  He was thinking about it then--how could he not?  Nursey wasn’t exactly closeted, but he wasn’t Bitty level out, either.  “And I’m sorry if I made you feel like you had to tell people today.”

Nursey shakes his head.  “I was going to apologize for the same thing.  I probably made people think it was you when I said one of them was me.”

“I don’t want to tell you how or when to tell people,” Dex says, then remembers his conversation with Bitty.

“Shit,” Nursey exclaims.  “I did not expect to be having this conversation with you.”

Dex tenses.  “I’m tired of being accused of being homophobic, at least for today.”

“Wait, that’s not what I meant.  Exactly.  I meant that it  _ seemed  _ like you  _ could  _ be.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s much better,” Dex deadpans.

“Sorry.  I mean in in a good way, if that helps.  Like, way to go against expectations!” he clarifies.  He stands up to look Dex in the eye.

That shouldn’t make Dex feel better, but in a weird way it does.  It’s not like he set out to go against people’s opinions of him--it’d be more accurate to say that he intended to do the opposite.  He was just trying to go along through life smoothly, but that’s basically a lost cause ever since his life at Samwell started.

But maybe he didn’t want that as much as he thought; he did choose Samwell while fully aware of its reputation, after visiting and seeing that it wasn’t an exaggeration.  He chose Samwell after meeting Bitty and . . . he definitely didn’t go here intending to keep his life peaceful and boring.

“Yeah, whatever,” Dex mutters, trying not to let his face turn red.  He casually brushes his hand over his cheek; it’s pretty warm.  He’s definitely failing.

Nursey looks at him seriously and puts his hand on his shoulder.  “Thanks for telling me.”

Dex rolls his eyes.   _ Thanks, Shitty _ , he thinks sarcastically.

Then he looks at Nursey and feels nervous all over again, which is why he can’t fully keep from babbling.  “Aren’t you worried about it?”  Nursey looks confused, and his grip loosens but doesn’t break.  “About being alone with a gay guy when you’re really, really hot?”

“First of all, that’s ridiculous homophobe logic--it’s not like I worry that all straight girls are attracted to me,” Nursey preaches from his figurative soapbox.  Dex privately thinks they probably are.  “I mean, I don’t worry that anybody of any gender or orientation that includes men is automatically attracted to me.”

Dex waits for a while, expecting a list.  “And second?” he prompts.

“Second, aren’t you worried about being around a bi dude when you look so good?”

At this point, there’s no way that Dex’s face is playing it cool anymore.  His voice shakes as he asks, “Third?”

A huge grin breaks across Nursey’s face.  “You think I’m hot?”

They look at each other, embarrassed, panting, frozen in place.  It’s an impasse, and Dex absolutely knows that he doesn’t have what it takes to break it.

Except that then he finds it somewhere in himself, something that nudges him over the edge just enough to take a step forward, bringing him closer to Nursey, intimately in his space in a way that can’t be misconstrued.  Luckily that’s all it takes to have Nursey’s hands on Dex’s hips, their mouths together in an unexpectedly soft kiss that only lasts for a second before they pull apart to check in with each other wordlessly, then come back together.

Dex is absolutely on fire, awake in a way he isn’t used to, and definitely, absolutely gay.

Nursey pulls away, though, to ask, “Should we talk about this?”  If he wants to talk, he should try being less distracting.  Dex does pause to think about it, though.

“Probably,” he admits.

Stepping back, Nursey runs his gaze all the way up and down Dex’s body, which is not helping the case that they should be stopping this for any reason.  He smirks, which is even worse.

“Dinner tomorrow?” Dex suggests.

“It’s a date.”  Nursey leaves, eyes on Dex until he closes the door.  Dex collapses onto his bed, thinking that way too much has happened today, and he really hopes that even more happens tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment anything! Especially criticism; go nuts. I'd love to hear from you.
> 
> Find me on tumblr as [loveandallthat](http://loveandallthat.tumblr.com/)! I take prompts for tons of fandoms and pairings.


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